Admin Admin
Posts : 14 Join date : 2013-04-25
| Subject: Not Recycling Tue Apr 30, 2013 9:29 am | |
| Only 28 percent of the waste produced in a household is ever recycled or composted: Most ends up in landfills, and a small percentage is burned at combustion facilities [source: United States Environmental Protection Agency]. As trash rots, it produces a large amount of gases, which make their way into the air or infiltrate nearby bodies of water. Toxic things like batteries and chemical products are especially damaging, but rubber, plastic and other common household items are also a problem. One of the gases produced by rotting garbage is methane, which can be explosive if we don't manage it properly and prevent it from building up in enclosed containers or facilities. When it comes to paper, the statistics are even more startling. To produce virgin paper fiber, we need trees. Today, most of the lumber used in paper production comes from managed forests, which have been planted specifically for this purpose. However, these forests tend to be very uniform, usually consisting of a single type of tree and little other vegetation growing nearby. Lack of diversity affects the interaction of species and can damage the ecosystem. Making paper from scratch also requires up to 70 percent more energy and 790 more gallons of water than it would require to recycle the same amount of paper [source: Waste Online]. Talk about it! | |
|